I was picked up in the train station from the ride from Madrid (6 hours) by Ana's friend Richi who I had never met. He was incredibly gracious in welcoming me into his home. He was also great to talk too, since he knew some english and had been a professional basketball coach for the Salamanca team and is a big sports fan.
Sonia is Richi's girlfriend and they live together just outside salamanca. Sonia grew up with Ana in salamanca and is great. She doesn't know much english, so we mostly communicated with a lot of help from the spanish-english dictionary. Spending a few days with her really helped my Spainish though! I decided I need to get a spanish girlfriend if I want to learn!
Sonia was hilarious and reminded me so much of Ana it was funny.
My typical mornings were spent usually having a leasurely breakfast with Sonia to help cure my hangover as Richi slept. He is on vacation in July and August since he's a schoolteacher. Breakfast was always simple with just toast and juice and coffee and sometimes eggs. Then Richi would get up around 1 and we would have a huge comida (lunch) with sausage, fried potatoes, ham, and sometimes seafood. It was always great! I don't know how Richi can stay so skinny the way he eats. I would be 300 lbs.
The afternoons Sonia worked in the hospital (she's a nurse) and would drop me off at the city center plaza mayor. It is supposedly the best city plaza in any city in Spain and it's the most impressive I've seen. It's really beautiful, and ther is a lot of activity there. I would just sit with my beer or cafe (almost always con leche) and read or write but more importantly people watch. I could spend hours in the plaza. What a great life.
Salamanca is a huge city for foreign students and there are a ton of american and australian and english college kids everywhere. I don't blame them, it seems like a great place to go to school. I always regretted not studying in Sevilla in college.. Salamanca University is very very good and the 3rd oldest university in the world (so I'm told).
I think not hanging out with Sonia and Richi I might not have had so great a time since the city is so young.
The evenings consisted of going out for Tapas and beer every night around 10-11 which would consist of our dinner. My favorite tapas were the costillas (ribs) -you were right Vince- and I liked the pimento (peppers) stuffed with fish. The various anchovy tapas I surprisingly liked. I didn't so much care for the tripe or blood tapas (go figure).
After dinner we would either go out to the dance clubs or hang out with Richi's brother Jose and his wife Begonia and daughter Sarah. We all went to see a street theater one night in the city which was great. They had acrobats and magicians and comedians who were all very good.
I've noticed that Spaniards have very strong feelings against the war and Bush -they uniformly think he's a moron- but they can seperate the person with the politics. I had several discussions with people about the war, but they never got personal. People in Spain think the war is barbaric an really hate the president of spain for siding with Bush. There is political satire everywhere about Bush and Anzar..
I also met a lot of Richi's family and they were very nice as well. I really learned a lot staying with Sonia and Richi. The european family lifestyle is just fantastic. Their warmth of hospitality really taught me a lot. I really felt at home there and hope they will visit me in San Francisco or Hawaii someday so I can return the favor.
Next..on to San Sebastian